Ep 383 | Esther, Come Follow Me 2026 (August 3-9)

**Bryce Dunford** (0:03)
Hey everybody, welcome to Talking Scripture, a podcast where we illustrate relevance and application to the Scriptures in Come Follow Me.

**Mike Day** (0:10)
We also dive into the history and cultures of the text.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:13)
Thanks for taking the time to share and subscribe to this podcast.

**Mike Day** (0:16)
For show notes, head over to our website, talkingscripture.org. Welcome to Talking Scripture, I'm Mike.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:25)
And I'm Bryce.

**Mike Day** (0:26)
And today we're going to be in the Book of Esther.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:29)
And every one of us have come to earth, and at some moment in our life, we need to be in Esther. It's a story about a brave woman willing to risk vulnerability and stand up for her people.

**Mike Day** (0:41)
Yeah. The Book of Esther is 10 chapters, and it's set historically in what's known as the Persian period, we think right around 486 to 465 BC.
Xerxes is the guy that's ruling Persia at the time, and he is going to be called Ahasuerus. When I teach a seminary, I call him surprised dinosaur, Ahasuerus. I know it's really funny.

**Bryce Dunford** (1:06)
Ahasuerus.

**Mike Day** (1:07)
My jokes are really lame. So verse 1 of chapter 1 of Esther says, it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus. This is the Ahasuerus which reigned from India, even to Ethiopia over 107 and 20 provinces. In those days, when this king sat on the throne in his kingdom, in the third year of his reign, he's going to have this feast. And the feast is going to be described. So with that, let's talk about just a brief outline of the 10 chapters, and then we'll kind of sink our anchor and look at some of the specifics. So the first three chapters of the Book of Esther talk about the court of the Persians. There's this big drinking party that the king has, and the king is asking his wife, her name is Vashti, to do some things that she doesn't like, and so he's upset with her, and so he wants to get a new queen, and so the second chapter is where Xerxes or Ahasuerus seeks for a new queen, and Mordecai, who is an uncle to Esther, finds a way to put her forth into the court so that she can be an option to be the new queen, and Esther is not telling the king that she's Jewish, and the king chooses her, and so she marries the king, she's brought into his circle, and then in the third chapter, we're introduced to the villain. The villain of the Book of Esther is this guy named Haman, and his goal is to basically wipe out the Jews. And so that's the introduction. So we have Esther, the court of the Persians, she gets married to the king, and then there's this plot by Haman to kill the Jewish people.
Chapters four through eight of Esther are what is called the reversal. Haman has the power and he wants to kill the Jews, and so in the fourth chapter, Mordecai, who's Esther's uncle, works with Esther to try and find a way where they can save their people. Mordecai says to her, who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
And I really do think the main point of Esther is in the fourth chapter.
In the fifth chapter, Esther gets audience with the king.

**Bryce Dunford** (3:13)
And this is a huge risk she's taking to go in and see the king. Only certain people had audiences with king. And if you presume that, if you walked into the king without an invitation, it could have resulted in her being killed.

**Mike Day** (3:29)
Yes. And in the sixth chapter, Haman sees that Mordecai gets honors. And then in the seventh chapter, she reveals the plot that Haman has to take out the Jews. And in the eighth chapter, Haman's edict to kill the Jews is reversed. And so it is taken away.
And Haman builds these gallows that are really tall, and he's going to hang from the gallows that he built to kill the Jews. And Mordecai and Esther are exalted. That's the reversal of chapter eight. Now the ninth chapter, the Jews triumph over their enemies. So they get rest from their enemies. Now they're doing some other things too, like they're slaying their foes. I'm just gonna put that on the shelf for right now. But they have rest from their enemies, and then they establish a festival. That's called the Festival of Purim today.
And then in the 10th chapter, it's really short, but the 10th chapter just basically talks about the accomplishments of the king and also Mordecai. And so that's the end. Now just know that there are a lot of historical problems with the Book of Esther. I mean, how historical is it? If you want to know more about it, go to the show notes and you can read some of the things that scholars have written on this. But that being said, I don't know. I wasn't there. I'm just going to teach and talk about what's in the Book of Esther.